... automatically, worn out by the gloomy day and by the perspective of a sad tomorrow, I put in my mouth a spoonful of tea in whi...ch I had softened a piece of the madeleine.... A delicious pleasure overtook me, isolated, disconnected from any idea about its cause. It immediately made life's vicissitudes indifferent to me, life's disasters became innocuous, its brevity illusory, in the same way that love operates, filling me with a precious essence: or, rather, this essence was not in me, it was me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some ...sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers h...imself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Family life is full of angry situations. That's especially true because of all the voices we have in the back of our heads telling... us about the things we should be doing and should be feeling: spouses should love each other; parents should feel nothing but love for their children; children should be respectful of adults; our children shouldn't be acting the way they are; we shouldn't be feeling the way we do. The conflict each of us experiences between what we really feel and how we think we ought to feel is the cause of much guilt and frustration.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Eddie: Say, was you ever bit by a dead bee?Beauclerc: I have no memory of ever being bitten by any kind of bee....Slim: Were you?Eddie: You're all right lady. You and Harry's the only one that ever--Harry: Don't forget Frenchy.Eddie: That's right. You and Harry and Frenchy. You know you gotta be careful of dead bees, if you go around barefooted. Cause if you step on 'em they can sting ya just as bad as if they was alive, especially is they was kinda mad when they got killed. I bet I been bit a hundred times that way.Slim: You have. Why don't you bite them back?Eddie: That's what Harry always says. But I ain't got no stinger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Cities are expanding at an alarming rate. Inter-tidal zones are being polluted as mangroves gives way to marina. Over-consumption ...is leading to soil erosion and desertification, which in turn cause famine and exert pressure on formerly fertile areas. We are pulling out the plugs of the system that keeps us alive. Every indicator is showing red: species diversity, water quality, weather patterns, the number of refugees.... We are unravelling nature like an old jumper.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Above and beyond paying attention to feelings before and after a separation, never threaten your child with leaving or loss of lov...e in an effort to control her behavior. Children believe their parents' assertions that "I will send you away," "I won't love you any more," "I'll go away," and are terrified with good reason. Fear is a very poor way of disciplining a child, and it can cause severe lifelong anxiety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no ot...her way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »